Your Toys R Us Memories

Fone Bone

Matt Zimmer
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It's got to suck that he died while his life's work is on its last legs. If he died last year I wouldn't be so upset.
 

Fone Bone

Matt Zimmer
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I'm pretty sure he's only looking for billionaires to crowd-source this. He's got to know relying on small donations is a non-starter.
 

jaylop97

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As good as his gesture is It's going to be really hard keeping those Toys R' Us from heading back to where they've been in the last few years.
 

Fone Bone

Matt Zimmer
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So, that crowdfunding campaign barely budged since he started it.
He is instead bidding to buy it on his own, which he should've just done in the first place.
Which is weird because if he had done that, all of these stores wouldn't be going through liquidation in the first place. It's a little too late. There will be a lot more logistics involved than if he hadn't started that Kickstarter and waited for it to fail.
 

Dsneybuf

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While wondering why exactly snow is flurrying so close to the end of April, I just had a thought about meeting a kid who felt disappointed with Olaf's Frozen Adventure, and telling him a "things were worse in my day"-type story, about how Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas not only seriously pales in comparison to its predecessor, but runs, like, three times as long as does Olaf's Frozen Adventure.

(I forget if I admitted this here, but I dislike The Enchanted Christmas so much, that I twice asked Lindsay Ellis to review it, before she did so.)
 

Spideyzilla

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Some good news. Here in Canada, Toys-R-Us has found a buyer, which means that it's sticking around, but Fairfax, the company that purchased Toys-R-Us Canada, is considering purchasing some US stores. This means that in addition to surviving in Canada, some stores may stay open in the US. Personally, as a Canadian, I'm thrilled for the employees. Target and Sears have both called it quits in Canada recently (I was a Target Canada employee, and the closure really sucked), so it's very fortunate that yet another retailer is not going to go away just yet.
 

twilicorn

HER AIM IS GETTING BETTER
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Stone Pillow actually sounds interesting.

A little postscript about The Day the Clown Cried (the Holocaust movie with Jerry Lewis): A few years ago (before he died, obviously) Jerry gave copies of all his movies to the Library of Congress, including that one, under the condition that it could not be screened publicly until 2025. So we have about seven years to go until we can see it (not that we'd actually want to?)

AHHHHH I just realized I accidentally posted that to this thread and not to the TV Guide talkback (which it was supposed to go in) so I feel really low quality now.
Anyway, this is great news for Toys R Us! I kinda already knew the Canadian ones were still going to stick around cause the one in my area is still open even after the buyout, but it's good to see them hopefully rebound.
Also, the story of Target Canada is an interesting one in and of itself. It came almost as fast as it went and there's even a Tumblr blog devoted to abandoned Targets in Canada in all their almost aesthetic-y goodness.
 
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Spideyzilla

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Also, the story of Target Canada is an interesting one in and of itself. It came almost as fast as it went and there's even a Tumblr blog devoted to abandoned Targets in Canada in all their almost aesthetic-y goodness.
It's really something. As I said, I worked there, and experienced it first hand. Target came to Canada by purchasing Zellers, a Canadian retail chain with similar stores, with plans to convert them into Target stores. They started off on the wrong foot by laying off the Zellers workers and not guaranteeing them their jobs back when Target opened (Though they were all guaranteed an interview with Target, and many got their jobs back anyway). This meant protests were taking place outside their headquarters before they had even started converting the Zellers stores into Targets; not a great look.

They then proceeded to expand waaaay too fast in Canada. They had opened over 100 stores, but didn't have the necessary warehouse or distribution systems. This meant empty and messy store shelves, and Canadian shoppers just lost interest. They opened in Canada in mid 2013, and were practically dead by Christmas 2014. We had heard that that Christmas season was going to be a big decider as to whether or not the company would survive. I remember ending my shift on the Sunday before Christmas, looking around the store and thinking "Man, there's just not enough people in here." I worked at the busiest store in the region, so I'd hate to see how sparsely attended the less busy stores were. We found out that the stores would be closing shortly after New Year's. I remember that morning being awful. People were crying, hugging each other, asking each other if they could still be friends if they could no longer be co-workers, some people stating they would now no longer be able to retire. Liquidation started a month later, and we closed in early April. We all got several months of full pay. It was a really strange time in my life, and yet I look back on it fondly. I loved the people at my store.

An interesting anecdote. There is a shopping mall near me named Bayshore, which had undergone a massive renovation. They were going to open a massive Target store as the anchor of the mall, and as the crown jewel of the renovation. The store was going to open in February 2015. The store was completely built, the signs and shelves were up, the aisles were ready. The only thing missing was the merchandise. They had already had a job fair for the store, and all the employees had been hired. They were having their orientation at my store (We were fairly close to Bayshore) on the day we got the news that Target was shutting down. So picture this: the new employees have just been hired, they're in the break room of my store filling out paperwork and watching corporate videos, when the manager walked in halfway through to inform them that Target was pulling out of Canada, and their new jobs were DOA. Crews had just finished building this brand new store, and then immediately had to go about tearing it down. A few months later, it was announced that Walmart would be taking over the space in Bayshore where Target was going to be. I can only imagine that Bayshore begged them to come. Many of the places where the old Targets were have since been bought, many of them turned into Walmarts. The one where I worked was in a small local mall, and it has not found a buyer. The space is still vacant three years later, and the mall has basically given up finding a buyer. Without an anchor, that mall has basically dried up, and probably won't last another couple of years. Overall, it's a very sad yet interesting situation, and an example of corporate waste and incompetence. These Zellers stores closed in 2013, and were closed again as Targets less than two years later. It's really mind boggling when you think about it. Yes, Sears also died in Canada, but they had been successful here for several decades. Target's failure was so colossal that it's almost laughable. Heck, it's a perfect story for Platypus Comix, @Peter Paltridge . A comedy of errors.
 

mimitchi33

Lovely, in my most wonderful way!
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Anyway, this is great news for Toys R Us! I kinda already knew the Canadian ones were still going to stick around cause the one in my area is still open even after the buyout, but it's good to see them hopefully rebound.
Also, the story of Target Canada is an interesting one in and of itself. It came almost as fast as it went and there's even a Tumblr blog devoted to abandoned Targets in Canada in all their almost aesthetic-y goodness.
I'm even shocked that there were even Targets in Canada, because I never heard of them before. That blog is cool, though.

While wondering why exactly snow is flurrying so close to the end of April, I just had a thought about meeting a kid who felt disappointed with Olaf's Frozen Adventure, and telling him a "things were worse in my day"-type story, about how Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas not only seriously pales in comparison to its predecessor, but runs, like, three times as long as does Olaf's Frozen Adventure.

(I forget if I admitted this here, but I dislike The Enchanted Christmas so much, that I twice asked Lindsay Ellis to review it, before she did so.)
I read Reddit comments that kids who saw it before Coco were bored with the short even though they liked Frozen. One story told of a mom's daughter who really wanted to see it and was mad because it wasn't what she expected it to be. I also see the merchandise for that sitting on shelves and not moving while all the PAW Patrol and Trolls stuff flies off the shelves.

That's sad...
 

PinkieLopBun

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Final message on their website:
Dc2sCtIV4AUvh45.jpg
 

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